


A Clockwork Chocolate Orange

by executrix



Category: Continuum (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kiera is not looking forward to a great Christmas, but it all works out...in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clockwork Chocolate Orange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [groovekittie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/groovekittie/gifts).



_KIERA (Voiceover): 2012. Same city, wrong time, no family. Liber8 is here too, and they’re up to their old tricks. Even if they don’t kill me, I don’t know if I have a home to go back to. I’m still fighting, and I have some…allies. But I’m alone. Really, really alone._

December 19 

“Yes!” Kiera shouted into her cellphone. “I did buy all those things! But you gave me a credit card with a big credit line, and there’s still some of it left! So stop haslanguing me.” 

Betty, behind the glass wall, looked up and mouthed “Haslanguing?” 

“You are hassling and haranguing me!” Kiera told the phone, then realized that if Betty could hear her, she was probably too loud. 

“Lady, calm down, I’m just doing my job, trying to pay the Christmas bills,” the phone operator said. 

“Well, I want Christmas bills! Or, anyway, I want those things, and if I have to pay for them to get them, I’ll do it. And now I’m going out to buy some more!” She ended the call. Alec patched in to her headset. “You OK, Kiera? You didn’t sound OK.” 

Kiera let him wait until she could get out of the bullpen and into the locker room, which was mercifully unoccupied. “Will everybody just stop *surveilling* me?” 

“Coming from you, that’s actually kind of funny,” Alec said. 

“Coming from you it’s even funnier…” 

“I’m just worried about you, is all. You’re my….ummm, non-biological remote descendent who feels like a… slightly older…yet inspirational mentor?” 

“And I think of you as my *husband’*s mentor. Is there a cardmark wall for that?” 

Alec took a moment to parse that. “I think you mean a Hallmark card. And, no.” 

December 20 (A.M) 

“Fonnegra,” Inspector Dillon said. “You’re single now. And we didn’t even indict you for getting that way.” 

Carlos flinched. “Glad you enjoyed that sensitivity course, sir.” 

“So you can work the Toys for Tots gig. You, too, Kiera. It can be just like that Mary Tyler Moore episode.” 

“Huh?” Kiera said. 

“And that’s even from South of the Border Down USA Way! I come up with a U.S. reference for you, and you’re not even grateful!” 

“He means, that he thinks you don’t have a family, so he can stick you with working over Christmas,” Alec said into her ear. 

“Cameron, you didn’t put in for time off to go back to the States. And, because I’m a detective, I deduced that therefore you will be grateful for a chance to bring joy to others instead of having a lonely Christmas.”  
“No, I wouldn’t be grateful. But…sure, I’ll do it. I love kids.” She willed her eyes to stop brimming, before anyone could notice and give her crap about it—or, worse, be sympathetic. 

December 20 (P.M.) 

Kiera stacked the toy boxes and book bags neatly, with the others. But the smallest box, a colorful cube, was for her. She sat down at the small round table in the hall, opposite the grating where the piece of the time machine had been hidden. She took the foil-wrapped sphere out of its box. She crinkled off the foil, and struck the chocolate orange gently, so that the pieces came apart. 

First, she knelt and put a piece of the chocolate behind the grille, replacing the hope that had been taken away. Slowly, she ate one of the pieces. There were no oranges, back home (she surmised that they fell victim to bee disease, or climate change). She liked oranges a lot, and they made a good mix with chocolate. 

She couldn’t help thinking that the synthesized chocolate products at home tasted realer than this timeline’s chocolate, though. 

Kiera had no pretenses to being a philosopher, or a physicist, so she didn’t know what Liber8’s alpha release of Let’s Screw Around With the Time Stream had done. (If she was an alpha tester, she’d give it a bad review, and if she was a development executive, she’d cancel the project.) 

Kiera couldn’t stand the thought of Sam, missing her (even if, in some interpretations, she was a hero who sacrificed her life, so he’d be proud of her). It was a little better to think that…everything had changed, and Sam never existed at all outside her memories. So he wasn’t a lonely orphan; he just *wasn’t*. Which would make it even more horrible if Kiera could get back to her own time, where she would be…not Sam’s mother, with no one to commiserate with her because no one would know. 

December 21 (after Kiera’s shift) 

The suit was rated to keep her perfectly comfortable in any terrestrial weather condition, so Kiera had to remember to throw on a down jacket, zip it up, swaddle herself in hat, scarf, and gloves, and wait until she was out of the line of sight of her co-workers before she could unzip the jacket and put away the rest of the encumbrances. She took a deep breath of icy air and headed for The Drive. She had already done a canvass of the Pacific Centre thorough enough to trip wires at the credit card company. 

Eventually, she planned to put in a long session at Kidsbooks, even though Sam had never been much of a reader. He preferred to watch sports, or go to the VirChamber. (Kiera was proud that his favorites were the First Person Protector campaigns.) 

But maybe, if he had a shiny book in his hand, or an old one with a threadbare cloth cover, instead of the same old reading device that everybody else had? Sam always liked to be special. If everyone in his class wore the short-sleeved uniform shirt, she’d have to argue him out of wearing the long-sleeved one. 

Books looked special, most of all the ones with illustrations. Some of the old ones smelled nasty—stale--but other old ones had a creamy richness to the look and smell of their paper. No matter how commonplace it was here, Kiera couldn’t help finding paper exotic. She told herself that she had far too much work to wait in the queue at the gift-wrapping station, but really, she enjoyed the evenings spent finding just the right paper and ribbon for each package. It looked happy and festive—much nicer than the impermeable plastic shells that played advertising holos when you touched them that she was used to. 

"Is that the lovely side of law enforcement behind that stack of packages?” Kellog asked. Kiera blinked, thrown out of her reverie. He was a one to talk about a stack of packages—he had a full shopping basket in each hand. Kiera had no hesitation about sorting *him* into Slytherin. 

"What are you doing here?” 

“Same as everyone else. Buying toys, of course.” 

Yeah? Really? For who?” 

“Equally obvious. For me. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. Look at this, a reissued classic locomotive, a Tickle Me Elmo with a custom Whitecaps jersey, Killzone: Shadow Fall for my brand-new PS4…” 

“Kellog, I can’t imagine anything that could dent your complacency. I almost envy that about you. No human connections. No human feelings.” 

“I **had** a sister,” he said. Kiera flinched. “OK, not fair, I take that back, when we were back there you were just doing your job. No, you weren’t just doing your job, you were totally into the ideology. So, some points for being a person of principle. No points for having principles that suck. And, hey, say what you like about deadly sins, Lust and Greed are definitely human feelings. Failings, feelings, whatever. Great to see you, Kiera! I mean, I had a bracing Greed workout, and now how about a little Lust for two?” He couldn’t help noticing that, where they came from, Kiera had a son whom she missed desperately, and a husband whom she didn’t seem to miss at all. He made a point of not discussing this with her. It would be better, possibly for her mental health and certainly for Kellog’s physical health, if she reached this realization on her own. 

“You’re disgusting,” Kiera said. “You can’t touch me with a ten foot pole.” 

“If I had a ten-foot pole I wouldn’t need the after-shave lotion…Look at it this way. Time travel sex is when you ended up going there, they have to let you in. I mean, I’m really the only masculine attention that’s available to you from someone who **gets** you.” He sang softly in a sweet tenor (Kiera was surprised that, although she didn’t recognize the song, he was obviously in tune): “Souls have been shattered, faith has been torn…let’s do some living, before we’re born.” 

“That’s..sad,” Kiera said. “Did you write it?” 

“Not really,” Kellog said, wondering why he didn’t just lie when he knew he could get away with it. “Hey, that’s a thought. Come on over, I’ll crank up my fabulous audiophile stereo system, put on a stack of Stones records, we can party like it’s 1967.” 

“In your dreams,” Kiera said. 

December 22 

"I got stuck doing this last year, too, you know,” Carlos told Betty. “You can’t believe how depressing it was. Maybe I’ll jump off a bridge so I won’t have to do it again this year.”

"So, the spreading joy thing wasn’t a total success,” Betty said, grateful that she always put in for holiday leave enough months in advance to be gone on Christmas Eve. 

"Well, let’s be fair, when you say “spreading” that makes me think of a manure spreader. Which probably isn’t having a lot of fun even though it’s valuable in the larger scheme of things.” He finished his coffee, set down the mug, lifted the mug and swiped at the cup ring on Betty’s desk with his sleeve, and put it down again on a Be On the Lookout flyer. “It just seemed like it would never end. One poor little kid—in the sense of little poor kid, although some of the firefighters went around to the hospital afterwards in the spirit of total masochism—after another. And their parents—mostly their moms, and most of them just looked miserable and beaten-down. If there were dads, either they looked furious or even more miserable and beaten-down. And I was afraid we’d run out, there were so many, and they needed so much, I don’t know what we’re going to do this year, it’s got to be a lot worse. This is a rich country,” Carlos said. “Why can’t a man just have a damn job so he can pay the rent? Not just slave all day to pay the mortgage, but take a breath sometimes and buy his kids Christmas presents? I think it’s getting worse. We’ll have more families that need a donation than last year. But at least we have more toys. We got a nice matching grant from Piron. And you should see what Kiera donated. It was about a bargeload. She sat around with it in her apartment, crying, and then donated it all. I hope Dillon never finds out, he’ll think she’s on the take to be able to afford it.” 

"I’m not sure she’s not,” Betty said. “She’s up to something, anyway. I just can’t figure out what.” 

"You just don’t understand her. She’s a…uh, she comes from an unusual background. And she’s a very compassionate person.” Betty looked at him quizzically. “Well, in some ways.” 

December 24 (morning) 

Carlos showed his ID to the guard in the lobby of the fire station, and was directed to the Toys for Tots site. 

“This can’t be happening,” Carlos said, squinting past the brilliant white swirls of the Santa beard and the pinned-up arms and legs of the too-large Santa suit. 

“Christmas truce?” Kellog suggested. “Ho, ho, ho and all that.” 

“What are you even doing here?” 

“Kiera brought me. She’s, you know, so bummed about the whole holiday thing that she can’t do this gig without somebody holding her up. No, let me rephrase that. Not holding her up in the armed robbery sense. In the emotional support sense. And, you know, I kind of like Kiera. For a fascist cyborg, she’s a pretty nice girl.” Fortunately for his life expectancy in this timeline, Kiera came over just too late to hear. He didn’t mention that Kiera had glommed the full contents of both his baskets of toys, and tossed them in the vanload with her own donations. (She kept some of the books.) Kellog only theoretically minded—he was rich enough to go back and buy the whole lot over again. He reminded himself to take a charitable deduction, then reminded himself again that he wasn’t paying income taxes anyway. 

“Kiera! You look beautiful!” Carlos had to admit; the fake-fur-trimmed skater skirt showed off her legs, and the bodice clung in all the right places. 

A movie reviewer surmised that Captain Kirk’s hair, in the first round of Star Trek movies, could be explained by wigs being distributed on a first-come first-served basis, and Shatner persistently sleeping in. Similarly, Carlos found himself partially encased in a green elf suit that not only terminated at his calves and mid-forearm, but gave him a persistent wedgie. At least the cotton-ball-trimmed elf cap somehow managed to be large enough to come down to his sunglasses, which he adamantly refused to remove. 

“Why didn’t you drag Alec into this, too?” Carlos muttered out of the side of his mouth, like Cagney in a 30s prison movie. "Why am I the only lucky one?" 

“I did ask,” Kiera said, looking sadder than ever. “But he said he was going to be with his mom, and after everything that happened, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had to come here with us.” Then she brightened a little, and pulled out her phone. “I’m making an elfie!” she said, snapping a picture of Carlos who didn’t duck fast enough. “That’s not what it means…” Carlos said, then shrugged (feeling a seam rip behind his back). “….OK, close enough.” 

The fire chief made a careful count of the available presents, and made the kids’ parents sign up. He kindly but firmly turned away some families at the door, which made him feel rotten, but meant that every kid he did let inside got a present. And most of the kids looked happy, or at least glad to get a present. He had four kids of his own, so he knew that it was impossible to keep a bunch of kids all not fighting, screaming, or crying at the same time. As for the parents, most of them looked miserable, or at least glum, some of them looked angry, but at least they didn’t have to get through Christmas without at least a present for their kids. 

December 24 (evening) 

Kellog, bending forward to deter law enforcement shoulder-surfing, entered the most current iteration of the 12-numeral key into the lockpad (he changed it frequently) and opened the door to his Gastown apartment. 

Warm, flattering lights came on automatically. Kiera scanned the apartment, data for the rooms she couldn’t see beamed to her retina camera. 

“I’ve been reading up on the twentieth century,” Kellog told Kiera and Carlos. “I kind of wish I’d been here for the eighties, the high-water-mark of tasteless opulence. But this will do. Guys, want a beer?” 

“A beer? Disappointing. I expected more from a plutocrat. I guess terrorists are chintzy,” Carlos said. 

“Tough being both at the same time." 

"What would it take to make you happy, Fonnegra? Should I just give you a decanter of priceless Napoleon brandy and a *straw*?” Kellog asked. 

“Nah,” Carlos said. “Gimme your priceless Napoleon brandy. I can drink out of the bottle. And belch.” 

“You’re usually a more gracious host,” Kiera said, handing Carlos a Scotch on the rocks. 

Three heavy blows landed on the door. They all looked up, alarmed. “Guess Liber8 doesn’t take a Christmas break,” Carlos said, reaching for his gun. 

“No, wait,” Kiera said, looking through the door. “It’s all right. It’s Alec. Or, not all right for him, he’s pretty messed up. Should I open the door?” 

“Sure,” Kellog said. “You’re the nearest.” 

Alec stumbled in, almost into Kiera’s arms. His eyes were red and he smelled of both barnyard and brewery. “Just left my Mom’s,” he said. “We got drunk and then smoked up and then she fell asleep on the sofa and I woke her up just enough to stumble up to bed and take her shoes off. It was so sad I couldn’t stand to be there for another minute but I was worried about her and she said not to be, she does this every night.” 

“Well, that sucks, kid,” Kellog said, roughly but probably sincerely. 

“Thanks, Boss,” Alec said, in an if-looks-and-brainwaves-could-kill voice. 

“I’ll make you some coffee,” Kiera said. “Sit down before you fall down yourself.” 

“Y’know, that just gives you a wide-awake drunk instead of a sleepy one,” Kellog said. 

“You know where he keeps his kitchen stuff?” Carlos asked. The kitchen obviously cost more than not only his parents’ house but the accumulated houses of his entire extended family, so just finding the coffee maker amid the multiple appliance garages would be an achievement. 

Alec peered into the dark depths of the shining gold can on the coffee table. “Is that caviar?” 

“Best quality embargoed Iranian,” Kellog promised. “Knock yourself out. You liked the champagne we had on the boat.” 

“I don’t think I actually liked it,” Alec said. “I liked the idea of it.” Then he swallowed a mouthful of caviar, grimaced, and dropped the heaped-up blini, with one bite taken out of it, onto his plate. “Yuck.” 

They all jumped, but it was only Carlos’ phone ringing. “Hi, Betty,” he said. “Enjoying a heartwarming Christmas in the bosom of your family?” 

He held the phone further away from his ear until Betty calmed down. 

“I got there all right! No thanks to my goddamn lousy car. And I was shuffling around in sheepskin slippers, making eggnog, when my cousin Dale announced that she and her husband were splitting up. Actually, considering the way they were hollering and carrying on, we thought she was going to announce that she had brained him with the axe and dismembered his body. And then Aunt Virginia clutched her chest and collapsed, so we took her to Casualty. Turned out it was just indigestion. And a pathological need for attention. By the time we got back, Uncle Desmond’s dog got up on the table and got wedged into the goose. This long, skinny roast goose with a Chihuahua sticking out the ass-end drowning in stuffing. Little legs kicking for purchase. It was the grossest thing you’ve ever seen.” 

“Considering what I do for a living, not even close.” 

“So, long story short, I got right back into my crappy car and drove back home. Wanna go out and get drunk?” 

“I kind of am already,” Carlos told her. 

“Sitting home turning into a dipso? I can come over.” 

“Actually, I’m with fri…with Kiera and some people.” Then, a diabolical impulse led him to text Betty the map with Kellog’s address. “Conveniently near the police museum!” he promised. 

“Quite the harem you have here, Cameron,” Kellog said. He was going to ask Carlos who called, but then decided that if he really cared he could just hack the phone records later. “The reverse version of the maiden…” (he gestured at Alec) “…the mature woman,” pointing at himself, “…and the crone,” pointing at Carlos. “Ever have a little Me time thinking about the three of us, together?” 

“But why say ‘mature woman’? When I look at you, the word ‘mother’ just sort of pops into my mind,” Carlos said. “Or do I mean, the half a word?” 

“God, Kellog, you’re awful. I don’t know how you could even make me a bacon sandwich,” Kiera said. She had no idea of Matthew’s and Carlos’ relative ages, even leaving the whole 2067 thing to one side. Carlos sure was a hell of a lot taller, though. “Oink, oink! It’s like eating your relatives.” 

“He made breakfast for you?” Carlos asked, grimacing. 

“Wait, what, you slept with him? Euwww, puke,” Alec said. “That makes me feel worse than caviar.” 

“Not how I’d phrase it, but, yeah, you need a taste transplant, Kiera,” Carlos said. 

“Breakfast is not automatic sex! There could be breakfast without sex!” Six male eyes stared at her. “It was only a…mistake,” Kiera said, and was saved by the bell. She opened the door to let Betty in and take her coat. 

“Hey, sharp Canadian tuxedo there,” Betty told Alec. En route to sitting down, she piled a blini with caviar, onion, and sour cream, sat down, ate it, and sighed happily. 

Carlos looked up from his repetitive Scotch. “Betty, I became a cop because I believe in justice,” he said. “You, yourself, are wearing a sweater with a 3-D stuffed moose on the front. With sparkly things. So shut it.” 

“But that’s because I was visiting family.” She looked at Kellog. He was vaguely familiar, vaguely cute, and short, so she wondered if he was an actor. (There were only about six of them anyway.) “Do I know you?” 

“I don’t know. Do you?” 

“Wait a minute. I’ve been using a BOLO bulletin about you as a coaster for months.” 

“Is that why they call it a mug shot?” Alec said, and hiccupped. He wandered over to the music center and put on “High Tide and Green Grass.” He played the LP, so the karaoke microphone wasn’t hooked up but he held it anyway and sang along. 

Betty looked around the room. She would have reached for her gun if she’d had one; she had to remind herself that she was a civilian. “Is this a trap?” 

“Don’t worry!” Kiera said, heartily enough to get Betty really worried. “He’s…well, he’s our CI.” 

“Not that he actually knows anything,” Carlos said belligerently. “Even terrorists wouldn’t tell him anything important.” 

Kellog shrugged. He wasn’t going to get his expensive carpeting messed up by fighting a drunk cop who stood a head taller than he did anyway. “I wasn’t exactly high up in the councils of Liber8 in the first place…the last place. I was just this guy who got caught up and dragged along. And, may I say in my own defense, a guy who made something of himself in a heartwarming immigrant narrative.” 

Carlos wandered into the kitchen, and brought back a plate of sandwiches he’d made out of $70-a-pound Spanish ham, raw-milk brie, and yellow ballpark mustard. 

Kiera’s first reaction to caviar had been politer than Alec’s, but not dissimilar. But now, with the aid of hard-boiled egg and sour cream and onions, she thought she might be getting conditioned to like it. “This is really not so bad,” she said reluctantly. “Here,” she said, taking the remains of the extra-bittersweet chocolate orange from her purse. Opening the plastic bag and foil wrapper, she handed one of the pieces to Alec, one to Carlos, one to Betty and, reluctantly, gave the last one to Kellog, who broke it in half and gave back half to her. 

“No, it’s not. But, first one to say, ‘God bless us every one’ is a dead man,” Kellog said. 

**Author's Note:**

> The novel “A Clockwork Orange” is named after what Burgess says is a proverb: “Queer as a clockwork orange” (meaning weird, not in the sexual sense), and Kiera is definitely out of her element in 2012 after leaving the high-tech future.


End file.
